Intel Quark Rides Arduino

Intel's new CEO Brian Krzanich appeared on the Maker Faire Rome stage to show an Arduino-compatible board using Intel's new Quark processor.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — It's great PR for both Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Arduino founder Massimo Banzi to stand together on the stage of Maker Faire Rome and talk about a collaboration. Time will tell whether that excellent marketing moment turns into real business for either gentleman.

Krzanich is stepping hard on the gas to overcome Intel's biggest blunder ever: missing the smartphone market. His announcement in September of a microcontroller-class x86 called Quark and his new collaboration with the DIY Arduino crowd mark two efforts to make sure Intel does not miss the next, next big thing, whatever it is.

It's not clear if Arduino or even the larger DIY and Internet of Things movements are the next, next big thing. But they might be, so Krzanich is placing Intel's flag there, just in case. It reminds me of someone whose strategy is to buy every property they land on in Monopoly -- not to touch a sore spot for the chip giant that still dominates the PC market.

The big news about Intel's Arduino-compatible Galileo board is it provides a little more information about the mysterious Quark chip on it. Intel said it is the Quark SoC X1000, a 32-bit, single core, single-threaded, Pentium instruction set architecture operating at speeds up to 400 MHz and designed in Ireland.

Previously the chip did not have a public name or any specs. It still lacks a full datasheet although the board at least has an extensive FAQ.

The Galileo boards Intel will start selling in November are just a tad high end for the DIY crowd at $60 each. They come with PCI Express, 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet, and USB 2.0. In a video, Krzanich said a conversation just 60 days ago made him realize Intel needs to be part of the Arduino ecosystem. The company has plans for at least one or two more Arduino boards, he said.

Intel said the first Quark is a 32-bit, Pentium-class single-threaded, single-core SoC.

Intel said the first Quark is a 32-bit, Pentium-class single-threaded, single-core SoC. Intel said the first Quark is a 32-bit, Pentium-class single-threaded, single-core SoC. At this point, Microchip or Renesas might want to welcome Intel to the microcontroller market they have led for many years. It remains to be seen whether Intel's Quark-based Galileo board offers anything beyond what these and many other companies have been supplying for a long time.

Nevertheless, this is a huge move for Intel in the opposite of its usual direction toward ever faster, more powerful processors. The shift points to a new reality: These days there may be more new apps at the low end of the microprocessor market than at the high end.

Krzanich is not alone in courting the DIY and IoT movements. Texas Instruments announced the same day its GHz-class Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex A8 processor powers the new Arduino TRE. Clearly it too wants to ride a wave of designs running on low cost boards like Arduino and its own Arduino-inspired Beagle board.

SAMA5D3 is 65nm and does 536MHz at less than 200mW for the whole SoC. Sitara is a 1GHz Cortex-A8 at 65nm as well and Vybrid uses a 40nm process. However a 486 is not in the same league as these Cortex-A5/A8 based SoCs, so Quark would need to sell significantly below the $7 Atmel asks for SAMA5D3.

Yes, there are claims of a "Pentium" instruction set but it is literally a 486 with a 5-stage single-issue pipeline and 16KB shared I&D cache (compare the timings with an old 486 manual or look at page 20 in the last link). Remember the current Atom is already Pentium class, so to get x86 any smaller you have got to get down to a 486! The die is about 30mm^2 based on the photo in this article. TDP is 1.9-2.2W for the SoC.

Forget FFTs, Quark won't ever run any DSP code. Multiply takes 6 cycles vs 1 cycle for a MAC on Cortex-M3/M4. Floating point is even slower: fadd is 10 cycles, fmul is 11 - compare that with 1 cycle for fadd and fmul on Cortex-M4...

It is good Intel couldnot or didnit enter smartphone business. They are experts in making processors and it would be good if tghey keep that monopoly going. Just joining the smartphone wagon would not earn any good.

Yup, I forgot about the A13, which is sold in small quantities by Olimex. I wouldn't be surpised if the packaging impacts the performance. Also, it's very tablet oriented, not industrial, and I wonder how long it will be in production.

Another point about the Quark: availability and price from Mouser & Digikey will be very important if Intel wants to be serious about embedded again.